


lullaby of the white woods

by monarchs



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Angst, M/M, Muteness, Myth & Folklore, Some things are left untagged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-12 03:34:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20145016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monarchs/pseuds/monarchs
Summary: Mark is a naiad, Eduardo is a prince, and fate is cruel.





	lullaby of the white woods

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sundays](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sundays/gifts).

> Warning for angst, and mild torture.

Pushed by the point of a slanted sword, the crown prince fell off the cliff, into the mist of the White Woods.

Prophecies grew more abundant than crop in recent years, but none, old or new, had foretold this turn of events. 

It was a grand victory for the northern invaders, and victory had never smelled fouler. Their bone-chilling roar rang, acres away, as their undead horses advanced to the next camp, skies a sickly green and overcast, looming behind.  
  
  
  
  
  
The kingdom would never truly know how much it lost in this first battle.  
  
  
  
  
  
Mark pulled the prince out of the waters, out of the reach of man-eating water lilies. 

He was unconscious, injured on his side, a gash deep and purple, pulsing with the dark poison of a chimera's tail. His breath was shallow, his forehead hot to the touch.

Mark found himself watching. And watching-- wanting it to hurt. 

Hurt as much as it had hurt when he had been pelted with sticks and stones and accusations from people who had once been family.

He danced a bandaged finger over the prince’s stained armour, over the crest at his chest, ghosted over the prince's face.  
  
  
  
  
  
Mark owed the royalty nothing. Not after what they had done, what they had taken from him. But here he was. Hesitating. 

He still had one last way to heal.

He stayed close, too close, washed the prince's forehead with water, before leaning in, taking a deep breath, giving away the last of his magic.

Giving away his first kiss.  
  
  
  
  
  
The prince took three nights to heal. Moonlight reached out through the branches on the third night, and he woke up with stars overhead. Mark watched from the waters.

"You saved me," the prince said, once he had determined that Mark wasn't a threat. 

Mark shrugged, expressionless. 

"Where am I?" the prince asked, softly.

Mark pointed at the white barks of trees. 

"The White Woods," the prince said. "Of course. Of all places I'd land in."

Mark made a circle with his fingers to form a crown, and then motioned it being placed over his head.

_The White Woods bent to the will of the King,_ he gestured.

Mark was banished here, and he couldn't leave; the trees and mist would make him walk in circles if he tried. On the other hand, the prince should find his way to the edge of the forest in two or three strides, provided it was the King’s will.

"You can't speak?" the prince murmured, irrelevantly. 

Mark scowled. He shook his head and then gestured again. 

"The crown? My father..." the prince paused, looking down at his hands. "Can you keep a secret?"

Mark scoffed, and then shook his head. 

The prince smiled ruefully at that. "Right. You can’t-- well,” he paused, looking at the ground, “I was cursed. By a vindictive fairy, when I was still a child. At the dawn of my twentieth birthday, I'll go into deep sleep and… never wake up."

Mark softened his expression.

"I'll never succeed the King," the prince bit his lower lip. "I'm destined to let down my father."

Mark touched the prince's shoulder.  
  
  
  
  
  
They scavenged the forest for things to eat. Mark could live on little, very little, but the prince - well, he was human.

Fire crackled, and Mark stayed away, seated on a rock, gazing at his natural enemy with disinterest and disdain. 

The prince couldn’t really cook to save himself, but the mushrooms were edible. They reminded Mark of civilization. Maybe his mother too.

Mark nibbled quietly, mindful of the prince. The way he was looking at him.  
  
  
  
  
  
They dozed off together against a tree, looking up at the sky. House with no ceiling. Cage with no door. Stars with no soul.

"My name's Eduardo," the prince said, when dawn broke through the mist. "What is yours?"

Mark placed a hand over a mark of a tree bark, followed its gash, looking at Eduardo steadily, projecting _Mark_.

"Tree bark?" Eduardo had said. Mark deadpanned, but then took Eduardo's hand and touched a war scar Eduardo had on the underside of his forearm.

Eduardo swallowed hard. "Mark," he said, finally.  
  
  
  
  
  
"Why are your hands bandaged?" Eduardo asked.

Mark's fingers shook, and he dropped the mushroom he was trying to pick. 

Eduardo didn't know, he thought. 

What was he supposed to answer? 

Mark’s hands had been burnt with hellfire, burnt until the tingling of magic left his fingertips, burnt far longer than necessary, until his hands were black with sorrow.

"You don't need to tell me," the prince said, voice small.

Mark hesitated, then gestured with his hands the form of the crown. 

Eduardo had looked at him with something indescribably sad in his eyes.  
  
  
  
  
  
"Your voice too?" Eduardo said as he motioned to touch Mark's throat. Mark flinched away. 

"Sorry," Eduardo said.

Mark looked down at the prince's hands. After a beat, he took one into his own and then brought it up to his throat, gently.

Feeling unshed tears in his eyes.

They had choked his voice to nothing, not even a rasp.

Eduardo looked at the faint marks, the imprint of rough hands, and seemed almost angry, but then he asked, softly,"what did you do?" 

It wasn’t an accusatory question.

Mark smiled and mouthed a voiceless _nothing_.  
  
  
  
  
  
"Mark, from Sisyphus Valley. Great grandmother was The Naiad," the faceless council said.

"She gifted you the White Woods," Mark responded, only to get whipped across his back.

"Insolence in front of His Majesty!"

"She was a hero," Mark proclaimed.

The whistle of leather breaking air.

"You _killed_ her."

Blood coming up for air.  
  
  
  
  
  
Eduardo walked along the trail of snow mushrooms and albino blackthorns, looking back at Mark, his silver armour reflecting him in dusk lighting.

"You're beautiful," he murmured. "Tell me you didn't enchant me."

Mark stayed quiet, still, unmoving. He didn't, he hadn't, not really. 

But would Eduardo believe him?  
  
  
  
  
  
(Maybe on that fateful day Mark had given away more than just a first kiss.)  
  
  
  
  
  
"It's my nineteenth birthday today."

Mark brought Eduardo to a lake whose waters reflected a thousand moons.

They washed up, leaving their garments to dry on low branches.

Mark didn't have magic left but sometimes his aura made the less hostile half of nature turn to look at him and comfort him in their own ways. The enchanter's nightshade would croon, the honeysuckle would purr, the three-winged doves would nest nearby, keep him company as they waited for the end of the day, the end of spring, the end of time.

So he let them do that, for Eduardo. Sometimes being the center of attention was nice, right? But then. Eduardo was the prince. He knew what attention was, surely.

Still. When Eduardo saw what was happening, he looked like he was on the brim of tears, staring at Mark like he'd just been given the world.

Mark looked down at the ground, at his bare feet, suddenly self-aware of who and where he was.

A half-naiad exile, son of a poor fisherman, who owned nothing but the cotton loincloth he wore on his hip. 

And Eduardo was the crown prince.

Who was Mark kidding?  
  
  
  
  
  
The King wanted the prince back. It was clear in the way the White Woods made Mark shiver, the way they did everything to separate them. Branches and wind and ominous murmurs.

But Eduardo kissed him. 

Kissed him despite the warning signs. 

Kissed him down his neck, against his collarbone, white with time. Kissed his fingers and his legs and his feet.

Mark didn't want it. Couldn't want it.

The prince had to live.

Had to go back home.

Had to stop the war.

He kicked and thrashed and Eduardo had looked hurt. "Mark?"

Mark held back an immense feeling of wanting to cry. 

He pushed his forehead against Eduardo's and closed Eduardo's eyes with a brush of his fingers.

_I love you_, Mark might have said, had he a voice.

He hid Eduardo's eyes with the palm of his hand, took a step back, and another, before letting go.

His hand turned ice cold again, like it had never known warmth.

And then he fled, leaving the prince in the middle of the King’s woods.  
  
  
(Because that way, Eduardo would be guided out. Guided home.)  
  
  
The birch trees quieted after he left.  
  
  
  
  
  
Days passed. Months passed. The White Woods wore winter well. Wore it best.

Mark liked to sleep under ice, because darkness helped with hibernation, and so was the watery embrace, but sometimes he got lonely, thinking about Eduardo, thinking about the kisses, the way Eduardo wanted him so much Mark could taste it, still, on his lips. 

He held the crest he stole from the prince, close to his chest.

War might have stood still in time, felt far away from where he was, but Mark could feel it brew in his very marrow. And emptiness chewed at his bones. Loneliness stabbed at his heart.

Bubbles and long-lost naiad lullabies reverberated in his ears.  
  
  
  
  
  
Maybe he had wished too hard.

He woke up midwinter, at the side of the river where limestones were covered in waning edelweiss, whispering their premature goodbyes.

And Eduardo was there.

Eduardo was there.

"I'm back," he said, sternly, but mostly, sorrowfully.

Mark pushed himself up, arms a little weak. 

"We won the war," Eduardo said, sadly. "My mother gave birth to my younger brother. That's our biggest victory."

Mark softened his expression. He sat up, washed brown leaves and winter off his skin. 

"I'll be twenty in two months," Eduardo said.

Mark’s fingers froze on his skin. Dogwood roses hissed around them, like angry cicadas on sweltering days. 

Eduardo took a step back. His voice breaking a little when he said, "I won’t stay if you don’t want me to."

Mark breathed in, then out, fists tightening. 

He had chased Eduardo out for a reason.

But that reason was ebbing away like tide.

Mark stood up on his feet, and even though he was still unsteady, he threw himself onto Eduardo and kissed him.

Chaste. Hard. Bruisingly.

Eduardo wrapped his arms around him, and even though this was all going to be gone in two months, sand slipping away in an hourglass tipped onto the wrong side, it also felt-- incredibly right.  
  
  
  
  
  
Mark never thought he would ever have… this. He had imagined, when he had been sentenced to the White Woods, that he would never have anything even remotely close to this.

His legs around Eduardo's torso, his back arching up into his touch, his insides feeling like molten gold, Eduardo tasting like nectar and ambrosia and heaven condensed.

Eduardo came in him, tears at the corners of his eyes, and Mark wanted it all. Wanted all, and more. Fingertips on bronze skin that felt like sun. The feeling of completion deep in his gut. Happiness welling from places he didn't know existed before.  
  
  
  
  
  
They slept face-to-face on their sides, their fingers intertwined between them. 

“I asked the King to liberate you,” Eduardo said. “If I won the war for him.”

Mark shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about the King. Not now, not ever.

“He told me- he told me he’d done what he did because of the fairy who cursed me.”

Mark scoffed. Of course. But what could they do now?

“It’s things like that that get humans into trouble, isn’t it?” Eduardo said.

Mark nodded. 

“He won't free you,” Eduardo murmured.

Mark kissed Eduardo. The trees stayed suspiciously quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Eduardo said.

Mark ran his fingers in Eduardo’s hair.

It was things like this that made humans forgivable too.  
  
  
  
  
  
Two months was nothing.

Two months was the shadow of every branch in this god forsaken forest.

Two months was the essence of nightmares.

So when Mark jolted awake, his hands clutching Eduardo's hand tight, sweat rolling off him like hot wax, he had to take a few moments to breathe, a few moments to realize what exactly he wanted now.  
  
  
  
  
  
_I need you to bring me with you._

Would there be enough time for Eduardo to understand that this was the only way?

Mark wouldn't be able to live here, if Eduardo was gone, sleeping off into eternity at the heart of the White Woods.

Mark grabbed Eduardo's hands and placed them around his throat, and Eduardo wrenched them off and looked at Mark like Mark was the devil, only to burst into tears, saying wordless sorries, over and over.

For what it was worth, Mark was sorry too.  
  
  
  
  
  
"They said that the naiad's first kiss-- that their first kiss can heal anyone from anything."

Mark looked at Eduardo, tired.

Spring was coming to an end two months early.

"You gave it to me," Eduardo said. "When you had no reason to," Eduardo looked down at their feet, in the water. "I'm glad you gave it to me."

Mark nodded, resting his head against Eduardo's shoulder.

"I wish I could hear your voice before I go," Eduardo said. "I wish-- I wish I could give you back everything."  
  
  
  
  
  
Mark looked up, and the trees seemed to feel sorry for him, bending away to show him the clear night sky. 

At dawn, Eduardo would sleep.

No matter how many kisses they shared in those small hours, he would have to go.

Mark didn't cry when they took his voice, burnt his hands. 

He didn’t think he could let Eduardo go without crying.

Because it was things of the heart that hurt the most.  
  
  
They kissed and kissed and tasted tears. Whose they didn't know. It didn't matter.

They kissed and the white anemones hummed. They kissed and the white archangels weeped.

They kissed and Mark curled into Eduardo's side, the side he had healed.

They kissed and touched and exchanged looks until it wasn't navy overhead. 

They refused to say goodbye as Eduardo's breath slowed down.

And Eduardo smiled, his hands wrapped around Mark's throat.

They kissed one last time, and sunlight trickled, and his hands slipped off. 

(If Mark said something like _Wardo_, it was probably too quiet, too late.)

So Mark shed tears, until there was no more water left in him.

**Author's Note:**

> I... I had a writer's block. I just. Anyways... thank you so much for reading. It means a lot. Really.
> 
> This is for [sundays](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sundays), for being my muse!


End file.
